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Hi,
I'm looking for an electrician to do some sort of survey on a house I bought recently, but I'm not sure exactly what I'm asking for. To save me having the same conversation over and over, could you let me know if there's a standard name for what I need, please?
The house is reasonably large and a couple of hundred years old, with the electrics likely having been redone in the 70s as there was a major renovation about that time. We've got one of those old rotating dial electricity meters, but we do have a consumer unit with an RCD rather than old fuse wiring, if it helps date the vintage.
There is some evidence of wiring that I believe is totally redundant now - we've got a bit of T&E hanging out of an exterior wall in one place (literally just dangling) and on the other side of the house we've got some old exterior lights that long since rusted and full of water and as far as I'm aware, disconnected.
There are three supplementary consumer units, one in a utility room, one in the attic for the electrics up there and one in a connected outbuilding. The outbuilding seems to be connected by some twin and earth tacked to the wall rather than any conduit or SWA cable. I have noticed that one of the bathroom extractors uses a bit of green and yellow cable with a brown sleeve as it's switched live, and as far as I'm aware that's not allowed so I don't know if that indicates there's some amateur work in there.
We have an issue with the main RCD tripping periodically, so I suspect it's either knackered or there are some minor issues somewhere. From the bits of wiring that I've come across (and from my position as a non-electrician) I've not seen anything that looks totally ridiculous, just maybe dancing around the edge of the rules.
The main thing is to make that everything is safe and find whatever's causing the trips but I'm a bit of a data hoarder and we're planning to be in this property for good, so if there's a level of survey that involves mapping out how things are connected together I'd be interested in having that for reference.
I'm aware of EICR reports, but I'm not sure how far they go. Is that what I want? Is there a name for what I want?
Thanks!
I'm looking for an electrician to do some sort of survey on a house I bought recently, but I'm not sure exactly what I'm asking for. To save me having the same conversation over and over, could you let me know if there's a standard name for what I need, please?
The house is reasonably large and a couple of hundred years old, with the electrics likely having been redone in the 70s as there was a major renovation about that time. We've got one of those old rotating dial electricity meters, but we do have a consumer unit with an RCD rather than old fuse wiring, if it helps date the vintage.
There is some evidence of wiring that I believe is totally redundant now - we've got a bit of T&E hanging out of an exterior wall in one place (literally just dangling) and on the other side of the house we've got some old exterior lights that long since rusted and full of water and as far as I'm aware, disconnected.
There are three supplementary consumer units, one in a utility room, one in the attic for the electrics up there and one in a connected outbuilding. The outbuilding seems to be connected by some twin and earth tacked to the wall rather than any conduit or SWA cable. I have noticed that one of the bathroom extractors uses a bit of green and yellow cable with a brown sleeve as it's switched live, and as far as I'm aware that's not allowed so I don't know if that indicates there's some amateur work in there.
We have an issue with the main RCD tripping periodically, so I suspect it's either knackered or there are some minor issues somewhere. From the bits of wiring that I've come across (and from my position as a non-electrician) I've not seen anything that looks totally ridiculous, just maybe dancing around the edge of the rules.
The main thing is to make that everything is safe and find whatever's causing the trips but I'm a bit of a data hoarder and we're planning to be in this property for good, so if there's a level of survey that involves mapping out how things are connected together I'd be interested in having that for reference.
I'm aware of EICR reports, but I'm not sure how far they go. Is that what I want? Is there a name for what I want?
Thanks!